“The only constant in life is change.”
Sure, to keep up with the competition, to stay ahead of digital transformation, change is required. There’s no getting away from it.
But what’s the real reason behind the change?
What would that change look like if implemented?
How will your team respond to the change?
Change looks different for every leader and every organization. But for the SMB the scope of change can look totally different than a company that has every resource under the sun.
The answer isn’t just implementing new software and watching your problems fade away. Change has to have a why, and you must be able to measure the success of the change.
Our Director of Implementation Jeff Bullough believes in SMBs focusing on one change at a time. Instead of trying to change multiple problems at once which becomes much harder to define success. Lock in on one at a time.
Think sniper approach, not shotgun.
The biggest hurdle for most companies
The first word that came to Jeff’s mind was, communication.
Oftentimes when change isn’t managed effectively, it’s because of a failure to communicate.
Leadership may know what they want, and the effect that they want the change to have, but that is not clearly communicated to the appropriate people at the company and the implementation process is a miss from the start.
Communicating change isn’t a one-and-done effort. Especially when your employees may not understand the full scope of the change and the why behind it.
To get your company on the same page when implementing change, think about how you would want to be sold on it.
Is it through a vision or a story? When you communicate the change in one of those styles, you can peak and gain your employees trust. Check out these questions by Harvard Business Insights, on how to craft a vision to tell your organization about the benefits from the change you want to implement.
- How will the organization operate once the change is made?
- What will employees experience as a result of making the necessary transitions?
- Will there be tangible results? What will those results look like?
- Will there be a sense of accomplishment? What will that feel like?
- What will the rewards be, both for the individuals and your organization as a whole?
You don’t have to be an amazing storyteller to put your vision into words that can be understood by your organization.
Not enough leaders are bought into the change
Resources can be limited at an SMB, that also means an employee’s time.
At an SMB you may have a project manager that is going to be the lead for implementing a new software. That person might be wearing multiple hats as well and their time is split between their usual job duties and the successful implementation of this software.
If their performance of their usual tasks starts to slip, some leaders will highlight that adding more stress and making the project manager’s job more difficult.
If the company’s leader is bought into the change, they will value it enough to understand and allocate the right resources and support to help the person implementing the change.
Employees’ best work is usually done when they feel they have the support from their leaders.
Implementing is one thing, sustaining is another
Implementing is one thing, sustaining is another
Jeff mentioned employee resistance is one of the main concerns when trying to create sustainable change.
Employees make a change because their leaders tell them to make a change but as soon as the results don’t show, employees will fall back into old patterns.
Change fatigue and burnout are real. But when you have a clear measure of success and milestones in place, that can act as motivation for your employees to continue striving toward the end goal.
At Fishbowl, when change is in action, new customers are assigned an implementation specialist who dedicates time to learning the customers’ business to a degree that suggestions can be made about how to set up Fishbowl to best support the business. A training plan and timeline are then established, and customer specific processes are developed for successful implementation.
So, how can SMBs successfully implement change?
By creating trust through open communication and leaders being willing to empower their employees with the right information and support to act on it. A fully engaged and supported team will align behind their leader to implement and sustain change asked of them.